STEM MILES: Mentoring Innovative Learning Experiences for Students

STEM MILES：指导学生创新的学习体验

• 批准号: 1742635
• 负责人: Jan Kmetko
• 金额: $ 65万
• 依托单位: Santa Rosa Junior College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2017-12-15 至 2023-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1742635&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: STEM; MILES; Mentoring; Innovative; Learning

With funding from the National Science Foundation's Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (S-STEM) program, the STEM MILES (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Mentoring Innovative Learning Experiences for Students) project is providing support to low-income students with demonstrated financial need and academic promise to succeed in STEM disciplines at Santa Rosa Junior College. This effort aims to improve the academic outcomes of low-income, academically talented STEM students by expanding the role that community college faculty play in advising and mentoring while pairing that role with financial support. Community college students will be provided with the high-touch, focused-faculty advising model, typically found at smaller private four-year institutions of higher education. Sixty low-income students majoring in Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, or Mathematics will be recruited, in three cohorts of twenty students over the grant life span. Led by an interdisciplinary team of STEM faculty at Santa Rosa Junior College, the STEM MILES project will provide interventions that develop students' scientific self-efficacy, identity, motivation, and values that are known to promote successful transfer to four-year institutions or completion of degrees in the STEM fields. To reinforce their sense of belonging to the scientific community and encourage their perseverance in STEM academic pathways, the MILES scholars will enroll in an interdisciplinary course on Critical Thinking in the Sciences and participate in co-curricular faculty mentoring. To enhance faculty-student collaborations within the STEM community, the scholars will participate in career exploration opportunities through networking, field trips, job shadowing events, career fairs, and internship opportunities. To foster scientific self-identity and self-efficacy, the students will select from a menu of professional development opportunities every semester, in order to gain experience with research, as well as build leadership and job skills. The evaluation and assessment of this project will inform the transformative process from traditional STEM instruction to specialized instruction. Formative assessment will track the experience of the scholars through the Program via end-of-semester checklists and surveys. The summative assessment will be done via questionnaires comparing students at the beginning versus the end of the program and the statistical analysis of student performance data against a baseline cohort. The underperformance of traditionally disadvantaged groups in the STEM fields is a well-documented phenomenon, and this project holds promise for providing a model that counteracts that underperformance. The MILES Program adds curricular components, a comprehensive system of faculty advising, and encourages the STEM departments to track data related to the progress and completion of STEM-related student pathways. The results of formative and summative assessments will be of interest to the increasing number of community colleges that are redesigning their academic programs to provide coherent pathways leading to improved student graduation and transfer.

在美国国家科学基金会科学、技术、工程和数学奖学金 (S-STEM) 计划的资助下，STEM MILES（为学生提供科学、技术、工程和数学指导创新学习体验）项目正在为圣罗莎初级学院的低收入学生提供支持，这些学生具有经济需求和学术承诺，能够在 STEM 学科上取得成功。这项工作旨在通过扩大社区大学教师在建议和指导方面的作用，同时将这一作用与财政支持结合起来，提高低收入、学术才华横溢的 STEM 学生的学业成绩。社区学院的学生将获得高接触性、专注的师资咨询模式，这种模式通常出现在小型私立四年制高等教育机构中。在资助期限内，将招募 60 名主修生物科学、化学、物理、工程或数学的低收入学生，分为三组，每组 20 名学生。 STEM MILES 项目由圣罗莎初级学院 STEM 教师跨学科团队领导，将提供干预措施，培养学生的科学自我效能感、认同感、动机和价值观，以促进成功转入四年制院校或完成 STEM 领域的学位。为了增强他们对科学界的归属感并鼓励他们坚持 STEM 学术道路，MILES 学者将报名参加科学批判性思维跨学科课程，并参与课外教师指导。 为了加强 STEM 社区内的师生合作，学者们将通过网络、实地考察、工作见习活动、招聘会和实习机会参与职业探索机会。为了培养科学的自我认同和自我效能，学生每学期都会从一系列专业发展机会中进行选择，以获得研究经验，并培养领导力和工作技能。 该项目的评价和评估将为从传统 STEM 教学到专业化教学的转变过程提供信息。 形成性评估将通过学期末检查表和调查来跟踪学者在该计划中的经验。总结性评估将通过问卷调查来完成，比较项目开始时和结束时的学生，并对学生的表现数据与基线群体进行统计分析。 传统弱势群体在 STEM 领域表现不佳是一个有据可查的现象，该项目有望提供一个模型来抵消这种表现不佳的情况。 MILES 计划增加了课程组成部分、全面的教师咨询系统，并鼓励 STEM 部门跟踪与 STEM 相关学生路径的进度和完成情况相关的数据。越来越多的社区学院正在重新设计其学术课程，以提供连贯的途径，从而改善学生的毕业和转学，形成性和总结性评估的结果将引起人们的兴趣。